Criminology and Harry Potter :-)
Hey there LJ,
Long time no see. But then again, I've never written to you much.
I thought of LJ when I thought of Harry Potter when I was in my class of 'pscyhocriminology and victimology', and thouhgt I might mention it in a post. For the moment I am on a one-year universityexchange in Rennes, France, where I continue to study clinical psychology. Since they're incredibly easygoing here, I can choose whatever classes related to psychology that I want, as long as I get my credits right. So I've been doing a combination of psychanalytical approaches to psychopathology (for which Rennes is well known) and crimino/victomology.
They're teaching me some really neat stuff here :-D. They choose to always see a crime as something that happens within 'the penal couple'. A crime can never be comitted without a victim. With the crime the identy of victim and agressor is created while at the same time it is exchanged and the line between them is all but clear. (e.g. abused becomes abuser, criminal feels victimised, stockholm syndrom, vicitmal recidivism...) Sometimes I feel like jumping up in class and shout: “You are talking about Harry and Voldemort, aren't you, aren't you?!”. I don't really mean to do hp-analysis. Others have done that before me and know the story far better then I do. Though I'd like to do some thinking on if the parallel goes a lot further or not. Like if I think that Harry's final way of dealing with this identity issues, and in how far he is (like) Voldemort, can stand model for criminal victims and their indentity conflicts and resolutions.
Anyone got any ideas? Or has maybe already read/written of this?
Oh,
one more thing. I recently rewatched a Potterfilm with my French roomies, IN FRENCH. Wonderful. It was funny to hear some of the French names and terminology as 'le potion polynectar'. But by far the funniest was how a magic wand to them is 'une baguette magique'. (Can you imagine? "Vite, prends ta baguette Harry!")
Will update somewhere later in life about the months I still have in France, my recently planned 5-week summer trip to Japan, my internship, and music.
Greeting to you all!
St.J